Abstract
The Cartesian strand of Hume’s scepticism unfolds from the revolutionary change in the seventeenth century philosophy that can be called a turn to the subject; the old metaphysical framework in which everything, including our mind, was structured by a universal order was replaced by the independent human mind that broke free from any higher authority and became an autonomous and constructive cognitive agent. Descartes was the first to advance this idea and caused a paradigmatic change in philosophy that opened the modern era. Hume developed his philosophy on this ground and the fact that Hume turns to experience while Descartes turns to pure intellectual insight testifies to a secondary level of differences. The autonomy of the mind liberated man from metaphysical bonds but, at the same time, imprisoned him within his subjectivity, leading to phenomenalism. The question “what is beyond our mind?” becomes meaningless for Hume – it is something beyond experience and we have to suspend our judgment on this issue. Our beliefs and imagination are of course unaffected by this scepticism but are beyond the jurisdiction of reason.
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- 1.
For simplicity, I shall use the term ‘modern philosophy’ instead of ‘early modern philosophy’.
- 2.
I am referring to Descartes’ revolutionary step of shifting the focus of philosophy from Being to the Self, as spelled out partly in the Rules, in his Discourse, and with most philosophical precision in the first two Meditations (and the first half of the third). For the time being I do not include Descartes’ restoration of metaphysics, a step that he took in order to solve the problem of the independent existence of the world and the possibility of true knowledge.
- 3.
I shall use the male form “man” throughout to stay in line with the texts of Hume’s time.
- 4.
A metaphoric description can be found in Hesiod’s Theogony: “And there, all in their order, are the sources and ends of gloomy earth and misty Tartarus and the unfruitful sea and starry heaven, loathsome and dank, which even the gods abhor. It is a great gulf, and if once a man were within the gates, he would not reach the floor until a whole year had reached its end, but cruel blast upon blast would carry him this way and that. And this marvel is awful even to the deathless gods.” (Hesiod 1914, lines 736–744).
- 5.
The inscription above the entrance to Plato’s Academy in Athens said: “Let no one ignorant of mathematics [geometry] enter this door”.
- 6.
This may explain Hume’s view that Aristotle is “utterly decayed” while Cicero flourishes (the praise of Cicero is understandable in the context of the renewed interest in scepticism in that time; however, Hume’s conviction that Locke will soon be forgotten is not easy to understand). See E 7.
- 7.
In his private thoughts – and after his return to metaphysics – Descartes makes the following confession: “The Lord has made three marvels: things out of nothingness; free will; and the Man who is God”. Although he attributes the traditional role to God in the first two instances, he trumps them in the third.
- 8.
Descartes made a breakthrough also in the area science, especially in mathematics. He applied algebraic analysis to geometry, and by enabling the visualization of algebraic problems in terms of curves he laid the foundation necessary for Leibniz and Newton’s construction of calculus. For more details about Descartes’ place in other revolutions in mathematics throughout history see Gillies 1995.
- 9.
Hume went even further than Descartes and doubted the existence of the self. This aspect of Hume’s scepticism will not be discussed here. Hume’s intention was to reject the conception of mind as a substance, but he made the same mistake. He assumed that perceptions must be tied to a substratum – to a scene, a theatre in which they make their appearance.
- 10.
Peter Millican provides an exhaustive analysis of the NH realist claims and argues that the NH quotes are not only outnumbered by those that do not allow the realist interpretation, but are often misconstrued. More importantly he demonstrates that the realist picture of Hume does not fit into the philosophical context of Hume’s writings from the Treatise and the Abstract to the Enquiry (Millican 2007a, b).
- 11.
For instance Edward Craig (2007) argues that Hume can be interpreted in both the realist and the anti-realist way and that there does not have to a collision between the two views. Peter Kail (2007), too, is cautious about Hume’s realism and admits that Hume’s stance is not univocal; he admits that two strains of thought – the realist and the projectivist – can be found in Hume’s epistemology and attempts to reconcile them. Helen Beebee (2006, 2007) identifies three interpretative positions relevant for Hume’s conception of causation, the traditional, the sceptical realist and the projectivist (which is closer to the traditional view) and argues that Hume’s writings allow for all these alternative readings.
- 12.
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Parusniková, Z. (2016). The Cartesian Roots of Hume’s Scepticism. In: David Hume, Sceptic. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43794-1_1
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